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One example of a company who is “rocking customer service issues via Twitter” is the tax services company, H&R Block. Whether or not you use H&R Block for your personal or business tax preparation, it’s clear they have invested time and money into growing and engaging with their online community on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

H&R Block uses Twitter (where they have over 11,000 followers) to build their reputation with tweets like the one below. The link in this Twitter update points readers to another one of their online communities – the H&R Block blog.

When it comes to Twitter, most tweets can be categorized into three main buckets:

Positive: Individuals voicing their praise for a person, company, or brand. A quick search on Twitter will show that the word “love” is used often in tweets.

Negative: Individuals sharing their distaste for a person, company, or brand. A Twitter search for the word “hate” returns a similar number of results as “love.”

A good community manager will triage mentions of their brand on Twitter and respond appropriately. Both the positive and negative tweets are usually the best opportunity to engage with a prospect or customer. The negative ones, specifically, become a chance to turn a wrong into a right.

This is what H&R Block does very effectively on Twitter. They are constantly monitoring Twitter for mentions of their company. A quick glance at the @HRBlockAnswers Twitter account reveals how they are actively responding to both positive and negative tweets.

Looking at the above screenshot of the @HRBlockAnswers Twitter page, we see a few “best practice” items. First, their bio describes very clearly who they are (Client Care Team on Twitter), what they do (provide answers to H&R Block questions) and what their online / office hours are (7a-7p CST).

It looks like they are linking Twitter with Facebook as the URL at the bottom of their Twitter bio redirects to the H&R Block Facebook page

Moving down their Twitter page, notice their four most recent tweets are all replies. They are fulfilling their promise (and then some) of providing answers to H&R Block questions. However, they are not just replying to people who mention @HRBlockAnswers somewhere in their tweets. Instead, they are proactively searching for mentions of their company and engaging in a conversation.

For example, @r_wett tweeted “HR block, how is it that the FREE SC e-flie [sic] costs me $30 to file?” A short seven minutes later, @HRBlockAnswers replied, “@r_wett Through the HRBlock website, Federal returns can be completed for Free. Fees apply for states. ^JP”

It’s clear that the social media team at H&R Block is monitoring a variety of mentions of their brand, including “HR block.”

What’s interesting to see is the people behind @HRBlockAnswers respond to all types of brand mentions – even those where customers don’t use the most friendly language!

Another example from that page shows their response to after she checked in to an H & R Block office on Foursquare. Their reply was a simple, “Welcome to the Family! ^JP” In this case, “JP” was not answering a question or solving a client issue. Instead, JP was starting a conversation with a new employee.

On a more personal level, I recently used Twitter to vent my frustration over an issue I was having with H&R Block. In a manner very consistent with the above examples, H&R Block responded quickly (within 11 minutes of my Tweet), provided a few mechanisms to contact them (email or private Twitter message), and followed up with me until the issue was resolved.

H&R Block effectively used Twitter as a vehicle to listen to a customer service issue. However, they took it a step further by moving the conversation from a public forum to a more private channel – direct message, email, and phone – to ultimately resolve the issue. One lesson learned here is consistent messaging. Specifically, the social media team from H&R Block followed the nine steps below to respond to an unhappy customer:

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Facebook’s Marketing Conference stopped off in London yesterday afternoon following similar events in New York and Tokyo.

The focus at fMC was very much on how brands should be using the social network to create an identity and tell stories through engaging content, with global brands such as Unilever and L’Oreal giving insights into how social fits into their marketing strategies.

Facebook VP of business and marketing partnership David Fischer introduced three new products to European marketers during an opening keynote: reach generator, offers and premium ads, but this was more of a recap of what had already been announced at fMC New York.

There have been many changes over the past few years in terms of how information is shared.

The advent of social media, the perceived declining effectiveness of existing methods and the state of economies around the world have affected the way brands approach content creation and distribution.

Gone are the days when information flowed in one direction from the brand to the consumer with little or absolutely nothing going back the other way.

The days when brands had full control of their content, and the type of message that they wished to spread to consumers, have slowly given way to earned media – where media coverage is earned from consumers, not just paid for like a commodity.

Google has taken YouTube to new heights since it acquired the popular online video service in 2006 for $1.65bn. And in 2010, it looked like the search giant would be able to continue to grow YouTube without worrying about the billion-dollar lawsuit media conglomerate Viacom had filed against it.

That lawsuit, which alleged that YouTube and Google were responsible for copyright infringement of Viacom content, was thrown out of court on the grounds that YouTube was protected by the safe harbor provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

April 5th 201219:56

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